In the one square mile area I live in, in Northeast Baltimore, between December 2012 and January 2014, I have seen 16 separate posters for missing dogs. This week I saw two, and then a third over in East Baltimore.
Last night I read this poster, taped to a light pole, as I waited for the bus:
Missing!
[Phone number]
[Three photos of small white mixed breed poodle in living room]
Answers to ‘Dougie’
Went missing on Sunday night, 1/12/14, near Bertram Ave. and Mary Avenue
Reward!
Please call
[Phone number]
This morning I saw this poster at another bus stop at Eastern and Rolling Mill, on a telephone pole:
Stolen dog!!!!
[Photo of black lab in yard]
‘Needs medication for nervous condition!’
[Phone number]
What is going on?
Two months ago, a dog I knew, by the name of Bingo, a white Beshan, went missing from his yard. His owner was devastated. Bingo was her only companion in that large house since her children moved out on their own.
I suspect, that with the 11 small dogs of these 17, that foxes are the culprits. I have seen 4 distinctly different foxes running the streets of this neighborhood.
One of these foxes stands knee high and is a few feet long from tail to nose, going perhaps 30 pounds. I have seen him three times, once in broad daylight, as he hurdled fences gracefully, and once when I startled him as he feasted on something in the center of a street. The smaller foxes I have seen with rats and rabbits in their jaws.
If this seems odd for an urban area, you must understand that Baltimore—while not as sprawling as Detroit—has large yards, overgrown service alleys, over 25,000 vacant houses, and a continuous greenway of parks, gulf courses, and isolated woodlands that stretches for over 10 miles from the rural forested hills around the Loch Raven Reservoir down to the wetlands and river mouths that feed the Chesapeake Bay. I would not be surprised to see coyotes one day. They are already in Western Maryland.
In the late 1990s I recall seeing a pack of feral pit bulls on the move, observing SAS squad level discipline. I remember feeling good about those pits having escaped the clutches of their cruel owners for a semi-wild life in a city park, from where they ventured out nightly into the ghetto to pillage trashcans for food.
Canine species have a lot in common with humans, in that they tend to prey on each other. Coyotes are notorious for eating dogs across the country. Likewise, when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, they waged a war of extermination on the coyote population, which had expanded in their absence.
I’m convinced the small dogs are fox chow. If you own a small dog in an urban locale that is greening from vacancies, decay and gentrified greenway initiatives, I suggest you not leave your little buddy outside in that dark yard at night.
As for the big dogs, everyone in Baltimore knows what is happening to them. They are being abducted by ghetto dog handlers, who breed and manage fighting pit bulls. Our local Harm City Michael Vicks snatch any dog over 30 pounds to be used as a ‘bait’ dog, literally fed alive to a pit bull—just like grabbing an accountant on his lunch break and caging him in your basement before throwing him in a pit with Kimbo Slice. That image does suggest a solution—well a punishment at least for those few brought to justice.
Recently the ruler of North Korea fed some people who were in disfavor to a pack of famished dogs. Based on the number of U.S. Service Men who served in Korea, who later related stories to me of seeing dogs hanging by the neck with wire for food, one might regard the North Korean God Emperor as an avenging angel of dog kind.
Could not we take a page out of his book?
Wouldn’t it be a better world, if, after being caught grabbing Miss Jane’s collie for bait to feed to his pit bulls, we took good old Terence, basted him with left over KFC deep fryer oil, and tossed him into the basement of an abandoned Harm City brownstone, conveniently stocked with a pack of displaced Yellowstone coyotes? In one fell swoop we could appease right wing vigilante tyoes, tree huggers, and homeless advocates!
If I were khan I would say, “Let it be done. Let it be written.”
There is strong evidence according to Predator Hunter publications that the increase in suburban foxes is because of encroaching Coyote pressure. As they move further east and south the poor foxes are being killed and displaced to the more risky human populated areas.
Coyotes are notoriously skittish around humans and for good reason but Foxes are desperate and willing to risk predator primates(us) over predator canines (aka their larger bullying cousins.)
As Coyotes> Foxes so Wolves>Coyotes..
and all their wild cousins>most domesticated canines aka the sell outs who were bred into weaklings.
The exceptions seem to be the larger hunting hounds, Curs etc..One on one or with group tactics they hold their own against the Coyotes in some brutal youtube videos.
Thanks Bro,
I have been fascinated by this feral/domestic/wild canine question since a dog that seemed half wolf or have coyote in Washington PA in the mid-1970s, began attacking and killing small domestic dogs.